


The Planets We Reach

by caporushes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, High School, M/M, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caporushes/pseuds/caporushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which our intrepid heroes have some conversations, are shown about the station, and meet some new friends. Including one off-screen fight scene and mild blood.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“This is fucking stupid.”

Karkat hunched his shoulders. The endless grey hallway between the main station and the hangar bay was making him itchy, the only sound the smart click of Kanaya’s heels and the slow shuffle of his own out-of-regulation shoes. She turned her head to look over her shoulder and shrugged apologetically. Yeah, that’s fucking right. She should feel bad, it was her fault he was here at all. She was the one who’d convinced him to run for student council president. Of course it was his own natural leadership ability that had led to his landslide victory, but it was totally her fault that he’d even tried in the first place.

So here he was, walking down the stupidly long hallway to the hangar bay to greet the stupid fucking pink monkey aliens from their nookstain planet that was so backwards, it didn’t have proper interstellar travel. What the fucking idea was arranging for this foreign exchange shit was beyond him, but as he was still in school and not yet leader of everybody he had to let it slide. They’d said something about “cultural exchange” and “promoting the understanding of other species” blah blah blah... He hadn’t paid much attention. Something about it had seemed weird, but he didn’t give enough of a fuck to investigate further.

“You didn’t have to come,” she reminded him, her tone irritatingly placating.

“Yes, I so fucking did have to come don’t you even pretend I didn’t. Jegus.” He grit his teeth together. The alternative was spending more time in the student council meeting room with everyone else, and fuck all if he wanted to be _there_ , with Eridan running around like a fucking moron in a cape. An out-of-regulation cape, fucking hemospectrum.

“This is a good opportunity for you. To, ah,” Kanaya paused thoughtfully, “demonstrate your leadership abilities.”

“Whatever,” he snorted.

The main hangar bay was a large construct, with high ceilings and spartan architecture. It could fit four large passenger vessels comfortably, though most of the space was devoted to more agile fighters. The two auxiliary hangar bays were much less impressive, so whenever the school needed to receive guests they were sent here. What it lacked in decoration it made up for in precise architectural lines, and ridiculously expensive materials. Karkat fucking hated it. Showy shit, but it would probably impress the dumb fucking humans.

He could hear them now as he and Kanaya approached the recently docked ship. He’d heard, though this was an unconfirmed rumor, that their backwards species hadn’t actually been able to leave their own solar system yet. That, until they’d been approached by the Alternian government, they’d had no idea there were even other sentient beings in the universe. He found that pretty hard to believe, but that was the rumor. Karkat searched through his memory, trying to dreg up what (actual, confirmed) information he could about the humans. There were four of them, he knew, two males and two females, and they were each about eight sweeps old. Of course they counted time differently, backwards and inferior as they were, but it did make them all roughly the same age. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

“He--”

“Oh MAN!” Before Karkat could get a word out, one of the humans was already making a fucking moron out of himself. “Is this for real? Seriously? Guys can you seriously believe we’re in space right now? And just got off a space ship? Oh man.”

Karkat squinted, feeling suddenly tired. The one flailing his arms around and shouting was slightly taller than the rest, gawky and bony with dark hair and glasses and weird, round teeth that stuck out a bit in the front. They were bizarrely pink and soft-looking. Two of them had yellow hair, and all of them had the weirdest colored eyes. For a moment Karkat had to gawk. He’d seen them in pictures, of course, but it was one thing to see something this weird in a photograph and another to know for a fact that it was real and not just some really bad idea of a joke.

Kanaya cleared her throat delicately. The dumb flaily monkey stopped and turned around, seemingly unembarrassed. In fact, none of them seemed even remotely bothered by their friend’s asinine behaviour. This was a troubling indication of their overall fucking worthlessness.

“Oh man, are you guys the ones who are supposed to meet us?”

His eyes were blue, what the fuck was up with that? Who the fuck had blue eyes? They took up like, half his fucking head too. Black pupils but-- blue eyes? In white?

“We’re from the student council,” Kanaya put in helpfully. Karkat had, he noticed with no little self-loathing, lost himself in staring. “I’m Kanaya Maryam.”

“Rose Lalonde.” One of the other monkeys cut in. This one had been quieter, one of the females with the freakish hair. Or maybe that was normal for humans, whatever. It looked weird, anyway. She held out a soft pink hand. Both Kanaya and Karkat stared at it uncomprehendingly. “Oh.” She retracted her hand. This was probably some sort of stupid human thing, wasn’t it. Some kind of etiquette thing and they’d fucked it up by not researching things. Fuck.

“I’m John Egbert.” Oh, good, just who he wanted to hear from! The flaily monkey-- John, Karkat reminded himself, he had to call him John --was still standing there, grinning away. Humans had the weirdest fucking teeth, he decided. Round and smooth. What good were they, anyway? They didn’t look like they could tear much of anything. Humans were such a funny-looking species, seriously.

“Jade! Jade Harley.” This one looked a lot like Egbert-- they both had stupid glasses and even stupider teeth. Karkat instantly hated them both. Hated them all, really, which was something of a novelty because he was almost beginning to think he’d run out of things to hate. A guy could only hate everyone he knows so long before it becomes a little stale. At least none of the other humans stuck their hands out in some human greeting gesture, whatever it was. The last one just laughed and didn’t offer his name at all. Whatever! Slime-sucking bastard, like Karkat even wanted to know.

“Dave,” the John human said, socking the blond male in the arm, “Dave this is amazing! You are not too cool for space and space aliens Dave, you just aren’t.”

The blond-- Dave, with the same coloring as the human Rose, turns his head and shrugs. He was wearing sunglasses, which was absurd considering they are not only indoors but in space. All the light is metered here to be at the perfect level of sensitivity for most eyes. Even trolls didn’t have a problem with the light level in the school, there’s no way a human would. If anything, the sunglasses should be causing him difficulty! Kanaya always did like to say the school was too dim. (She usually said “ambient”, but whatever, you didn’t have to be a fucking genius to know what she meant.) The John human made some sort of stupid noise.

“Well,” Karkat cut in, his voice held barely under control, “I think we should get a move on, shouldn’t we?” Without another fucking word, Karkat spun on his heels and started off back down the hallway exiting the main hangar bay. He didn’t turn to look behind him and see if they were following-- he hated them already, what did it matter? Their belongings had been sent ahead and were waiting for them in boxes in their quarters, along with their own uniforms. All Karkat really needed to do was give the tour.

+

The tour, as it turned out, was an unmitigated disaster.

Karkat’s uncanny and keen leaderly senses had accurately gauged the nature of the pink mon-- humans, immediately upon meeting them. He would be proud of this if his snap judgement hadn’t been “these people are all stupid and should be culled immediately”. Even the most mundane of accommodations on the station were subject to unrestrained awe on Egbert’s part, and jokes about certain disgusting-sounding parts of human anatomy from the Dave human. (Karkat didn’t know what a dick was, but it sounded absolutely fucking revolting and he did not appreciate the five seconds of his life he wasted on pondering what it could possibly be.) The Jade human seemed to know what a lot of it was, which was fucking bizarre because he was pretty sure their backwards shitpile planet didn’t have anything like alchemizers or transportilizers or anything else fucking useful, but when Kanaya asked in tones a lot more polite than the ones Karkat was inclined to use, Rose helpfully explained that Jade was something of a scientist back on Earth.

Still, it took all of Karkat’s considerable and admirable self-control not to choke Egbert until his eyes started to bleed when he knocked over his fourth important thing he’d just been asked not to touch that day. Even grubby wrigglers had more grace than this kid. How a planet that hadn’t culled him for excessive stupidity upon his birth managed to advance at all, let alone to the point of notice by the Alternian military, was far beyond him. Just when he thought he had reached a baseline of irritation that he could settle into, the John human opened his stupid round-toothed mouth and said something else fucking stupid.

Especially when it came to talking about movies.

“Hey!” The John human came up from behind him as Kanaya was explaining the finer points of station policies, procedures and expected student attire at length and in detail. ‘Oh jegus.’ He was grinning. ‘Please don’t let this fucking waste of oxygen want to be my fucking friend.’ Or pal, or buddy, or whatever stupid fucking human word he used over and over until Karkat punched himself in the face to make the hurting stop. Not that he had any real experience with Egbert that would say he would do this; he just seemed the type.

“Hey!” he said again, and clapped Karkat on the shoulder. Karkat glared up at him, catching a cautionary glance from Kanaya as he did so. Fine! Just fucking fine! He’d be nice to the shit for brains, jegus. Internally he berated his past self for being too spineless and stupid to turn down Kanaya and Sollux’s suggestion he run for student council. Really if he thought about it, Sollux probably only said it was a good idea because he’s an asshole. Worst fucking moirail ever. Fuck him.

“What.” It wasn’t really a question, more like a growled, gritted acknowledgement that he was being spoken to. They made a turn down another hallway, this one filled with in and out of uniform students. The tour was luckily almost over, and they were approaching the shared respite blocks that the students all stayed in, and then they would be gone and Karkat would be free of the grubsucking wrigglers.

The pale fuck laughed. Gog, Karkat hated him so much right now. What the fuck was even so funny? A guy answers after being followed by some scrawny-ass alien and he laughs? The shit?

“I was just-- hey, man, what’s your name?” Karkat stared at him because that was quite possibly the worst, stupidest question anyone has ever asked him. The fuck is this?

Which is what he asked the nooksucking weirdo.

"What do you mean, man? Haha whoa I just wanted to know your name, dude, chill out! You're pretty high-strung, you know that?"

Karkat grit his teeth. "Vantas. Karkat Vantas. You can call me none of these things." His face looked surprised. Good. That’s the way it should be-- all this chummy shit was starting to get creepy. Even being on a first name basis with freaky aliens was too fucking much.

“Well. Whatever you say, I guess!” He looked kind of hurt, and Karkat almost felt bad. Almost. He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was got lost in the sudden flurry of activity as they reached the respite deck. Egbert flashes Karkat a stupid, doofy smile with his weird flat teeth and then jogs to catch up with the others. Finally, this fucking excruciating brain aneurysm of a tour was over.

“These are your respite blocks,” he explained, gesturing to smooth black doors with no visible depressions or handles. “Your stuff is already there, so. Go nuts, what the fuck ever.” It took the brainless shits a couple minutes to figure out the doors. Jegus. Eventually they did, though, which meant finally, fucking finally, he could go back to classes and his own respite block and never see any of them ever again. He turned to leave, catching Kanaya chatting quietly with the weird-colored female out of the corner of his eye. (She always was slightly weird.)

“Oh! Hey, uh! Hey! You! Uhhhhm.... Hey Karkat!”

“What did I just fucking tell, you Egb--”

“I’ll see you around, okay?” He grinned, then went inside.

Gog he fucking hoped not.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our intrepid heroes have some conversations, are shown about the station, and meet some new friends. Including one off-screen fight scene and mild blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh my gosh guys I am so sorry this took so long, I am the slowest writer on Earth forever. I hope you like...!!

Karkat slunk back to class somewhat surreptitiously. The task of greeting the human children-- because honestly, that’s all he could think of them as, stupid children barely old enough to be out of sight of their lusus --was an important one and something he could rub in everybody else’s faces, for sure. The catch was, Karkat Vantas at this particular point in time didn’t want to talk to anybody about anything, let alone the colossal mental failures he had just escorted around the station. There’d be so many questions-- of course there’d be questions. This was just as new to all the trolls on the ship as it was to the slimesucking morons he’d just shoved into respiteblocks, everyone was curious.

Didn’t mean he wanted to talk about the pale scrawny monkey things. Now, or ever.

So when he scuttled to the back of the class while a drone dictated the mathematical formula required for-- something, Karkat wasn’t really listening, he was busy trying not to be noticed. Logically, this mean as soon as he sunk his recently-wearied bones into a fucking chair, one of his so-called “friends” had to plunk down next to him and start spewing noises from their face.

“Before you even ask,” he warned, feeling a headache forming behind his eyes already, “I don’t want to talk about it, Nepeta.”

The girl in question pouted, two over-sized teeth catching on a plump lower lip in a way he was fairly certain plenty of people found adorable, but he could only think of as fucking annoying. That she did it more in his presence was something he tried not to dwell on.

“If you are refurring to meeting the humans, I wasn’t even going to ask.” There was a moment of silence, Karkat cautiously letting his attentions drift to the mathematical formula being entered furiously across the holographic display board by some unlucky student the drone had pulled from the classroom.

“But...” Oh, fucking surprise. “As long as we’re on the subject...” Nepeta trailed off expectantly and Karkat sighed, sliding down in his seat so he could properly lean his head back. Her eyes were bright, and he swore that ridiculously idiotic fake tail of hers was twitching. Jegus.

“They were stupid fucking pink monkeys who can’t do anything right.” His delivery was flat. “The end.”

This didn’t seem to strike her as a very satisfying answer, if the petulant growl was anything to judge by. _Guess what?_ he wanted to say. _This? This is me not giving a fuck._ He didn’t say it, of course, because she had a moirail would could break his arm by accidentally bumping into him in the hallway and that would just perpetuate this conversation, besides. Instead he turned pointedly to his husktop, hoping the semblance of note-taking would be enough to stave off any further questions.

Things are never that easy.

“Kar _kitty_! That is not a very good answer.” Nepeta nudged her desk over closer so the edge was nearly in Karkat’s personal bubble. Karkat let out a noisy, exaggerated sigh-- just so Nepeta would be fully aware of the sheer amount of personal effort he was expending here, talking to her about this. It wasn’t every day a guy as important and brilliant as Karkat decided to give in to your silly whims and talk about ridiculous nooklicking morons, right? Right. So With that fact firmly established, Karkat folded to Nepeta’s whims like wet paper.

“There’s four of them, two females and two males, they’re weird and pink and soft and one of them is dumber than the rest, even though that should be impossible. Honestly Nepeta, I just showed them around, I didn’t fucking talk to any of the little freaks.” That Karkat knew that the John human liked horrible movies and that Kanaya had spent most of the tour talking to Rose more than the rest of them, or that the Dave human seemed invested in this human idea of “irony”, well that wasn’t really important. These were all stupid details anyway, little nitpicks in the face of how overwhelmingly unpleasant the entire worthless species seemed to be. If this was their idea of an adequate representation, of course. Which was depressing in and of itself, really, even if other humans actually had something in that squishy pink thinkpan of theirs. Karkat doubted they did, or why would they have sent such inadequate representatives to such a clearly superior race as the trolls?

Still, even if it wasn’t everything, Nepeta seemed satisfied enough. Eventually the topic of conversation drifted around to RP, and how Nepeta wanted him to play, and how Karkat would rather shove burning pokers into his eyes than RP with her and Terezi ever again in his life. Especially if Vriska and Tavros were invited, because honest to gog there was nothing Karkat wanted less in his life than Vriska trying to get her blackrom on with a troll who was broken in the head.

Mercy came swift and in the form of the alarm announcing the end of classes. Karkat jumped up and made a direct line for the door. Maybe now he could get away from these people and all their inane chatter, and concentrate on important things. Like not failing class.

+

John Egbert was seventeen years old, and he was in space.

This was amazing. This was beyond amazing, this was _phenomenal_. All moments previously labelled as “awesome” were but mere shadows of this one, and every second he spent on this station-- this _space station_ \--made the second before it seem shitty and worthless by comparison. He reverently tacked up his Con Air poster on smooth black alien walls.

“I’m in space,” he said, his voice awed and directed at no one. Honest to God, John could barely believe it. He couldn’t believe it when their names had been pulled from the pool of applicants all eager to find themselves chosen, he couldn’t believe it when they’d started the four of them training for the flight to the newly intergalactic Alternian Orbital Academy. Hell, John couldn’t believe it right up to and including the moment he stepped off the space ship (space ship!) to be greeted by his first ever alien encounter.

Boy, were trolls ever alien though. That was probably the most unbelievable, weird part of it all. They were close enough to be recognizable-- humanoid forms, the same number of eyes and limbs and all of them black-haired and grey-skinned --but just different enough that John noticed every tiny discrepancy. The two trolls that had come to meet them were, he’d been informed, the rough equivalent of their own age. They counted time differently, trolls, which was totally not a concept John had trouble getting used to because he had read so much science fiction. All of the science fiction, even. Also he knew that planets rotated around their own sun in a different time than Earth did, usually, because all the planets in the universe having the same length year and days didn’t make any sense. That would just be silly. But yeah, they’d been told that the trolls were about the same age as the four of them. They sure seemed like it.

John liked them, he thought. John liked almost everyone, but these two seemed okay. Way better than he could ever have expected his first encounter with actual space aliens to go, anyway! Alternian technology had equipped them with basic translators (implanted under the skin behind his ear, _how cool was that?!_ , but he could tell the translation wasn’t perfect. It struggled to keep up with Karkat’s litany of abuse, in particular. He’d have to ask him what some of those words had meant. It was funny, because even though John could understand what the trolls were saying, it still carried a lilt of Alternian. Kanaya’s voice, in particular, was smooth and sweet and low, but had this disconcertingly sharp, clicking edge to it around certain syllables. Karkat was all roughness and sharp edges, of course, but John thought maybe that was probably just what he was saying and not how he was saying it.

Satisfied with his poster placement, John turned and surveyed his ro-- wait, no, his _respiteblock_. That’s what Kanaya and Karkat had called it, right? John was trying his best to learn troll terms and stuff, so he could get along better without getting confused. A lot of troll names for things sounded really funny in English, and it took him a while to figure out what they were supposed to be. That’s just the way it went he guessed, with this whole “alien culture” thing.

Reverently, John placed his precious bunny Casey on a bookshelf. He wanted to keep her on his bed, but he didn’t. Partly because, well, it... Wasn’t a bed. He didn’t know what to make of really, this weird slime... thing. That. Was probably going to pose a problem. But later! Now was for exploring with his awesome friends in this awesome space station full of really cool (slightly grumpy?) aliens. Maybe he could find Karkat again. Or Kanaya. That he knew no one else at the school wasn’t much of a problem. John Egbert had never had much difficulty making friends. How different could it be here?

John went into the narrow hallway to see Rose and Jade already there, standing outside the door John was pretty sure was Dave’s. He waved to them and Jade waved enthusiastically back. Rose smiled with the corners of her mouth in acknowledgement. Rose didn’t seem excited to be here, really, and John almost wondered why she’d put her name in the applicant pool. Dave, too, for that matter! While him and Jade were, duh, so worked up for this, both of them seemed like they could care less! John thought he knew better, or they wouldn’t be here. Still, it was like. Man, whatever! Those guys could play cool all they wanted but John knew deep down they were squealing like little kids, too.

“‘Sup, bitches,” Dave greeted them all as he came out. “Well that’s me unpacked.” He pushed his shades up on his nose. Yeah, Dave put up a good front, but John knew. He totally knew. Those were the same sunglasses John had given him for his birthday four years ago-- Dave was a sentimental man, absolutely. Even if he was too cool to show it.

“Soooooo.” Jade rocked on her heels, pulling absentmindedly at a string on her fingers. “What now?” Dave shrugged, indifferent.

“Ms. Maryam suggested we all retire to a sort of common area on this deck. It is, she said, where the most trolls of a similar age and educational standard may be found.” Rose rolled the unfamiliar Alternian syllables off her tongue like she’d been saying them all her life. They sounded prettier when she said them, John thought, though maybe that was the last of a lingering crush on her talking. She had made sure to very politely and firmly nip that in the bud ages ago, of course, but they were still friends and John liked her an awful lot. Liked all his friends! Friends were great.

“Sounds sick, Lalonde. I can’t wait to rub weird elbow-like anatomies with the rest of these grey charmers, if they’re anything like the short loud one.”

“Aww, they weren’t that bad, Dave.” John nudged Dave in the ribs. Dave snorted, his expression unchanged. Probably. It was so hard to tell behind the aviators. Even Jade wrinkled her nose at him. Man, whatever! Those guys didn’t even know what they were talking about, Kanaya and Karkat had been totally cool. Kind of. Kanaya had been, anyway.

“Whatever you say, Egbert.” He gestured down the narrow hallway with a smooth flourish of his wrists. “Lead on, O Thou Prince of Shitty Movies and Alien Diplomacy.” John supposed he should probably feel insulted, the way Dave said it, but nah. They’d been friends too long. He laughed instead.

“This way, I believe.” Rose turned on her heels and led them unerringly down identical hallways, some of them with other trolls in them, some of them not. Everywhere they went, heads turned. The attention was so weird. John knew the four of them were just as alien to the, uhm, aliens? trolls! as they were to the four of them but... Yeah no it was still super ultra weird. He tried to ignore it, but he could still feel the weird prickle of yellow eyes on his face. Luckily, John was very good at ignoring things.

The common area, when they get there, is a dingy grey affair with four computer terminals lined up against the far wall (two of which are occupied), a couch that looked like it had seen better days, a shelf with a stack of board games and movies, and what John assumed was some kind of weird alien television. It looked kind of like one anyway, even though nobody was watching it so he couldn’t really be sure. His gaze drifted over the few troll students milling about the place and came to settle on the stack of movies on the shelves. Delight bloomed slow and bright across his face. Of all the many awesome, totally sweet things John Egbert expected to find in space, a whole new species worth of movies was not one of them. He wondered if they had action movies.

His film-induced daydreaming was broken by a sudden and loud commotion from the hallway they’d just come in from. Geez they sure weren’t spending long in any one place! It’s almost like they were just there long enough to introduce some kind of plot idea before moving on. A few of the trolls in the common room perked their heads up, and so did the four human kids. This was that particular flavor of commotion that almost every teenager knew-- this was the sound of a fight.

With Jade leading the way, the four of them wandered curiously back out into the hallway. It was way crowded, and that made it really hard for them to see anything over the trolls that had sort of gathered around the epicenter of the action and stuff, especially for Jade and John. Dave could probably see just fine, being the tallest of the four of them, but Jade and John hadn’t gotten very tall and it seemed kind of like trolls usually were (previous company excluded, maybe?). Dave was just standing around disinterested anyway, so John couldn’t even ask him what was going on. He tried to see over all the black hair and candycorn horns, but it was hard! He just wanted to know what all the noise was about, c’mon. Not that fights were a good thing, probably, but John wanted to see anyway. Jade was trying to wiggle her way forward, but she wasn’t really doing much better as far as John could see. He thought he saw her get elbowed in the face, but just as he was about to open his mouth and and say something (like, maybe, “bluh don’t hurt my sister” or something similarly charming and manly and stuff) there was a shift in tone and the crowd parted.

“Serket! Serket get back here!”

The troll who came towards them was tall and rail thin, her uniform jacket half-undone over a black tank with something on it. John couldn’t quite figure out what it was but wow she was pretty. In a way that made him kind of want to run away, anyway. Kind of like a leopard. A leopard with a nose that had been smashed a bloody blue (whoa, whooooa, alien blood was _blue_!) but that looked like. Like it had won whatever that fight was about, probably. Her expression was razor-sharp but pleased. John didn’t even want to look at the other troll.

 

Suddenly John wondered just what kind of school they’d gotten themselves into.


	3. Chapter 3

**\--ectoBiologist [EB] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG]--**

**EB: i can’t sleep in these things!**   
**GG: :/**   
**GG: me either! :/ :/**   
**EB: hehe who knew the beds would be the weirdest thing about living with aliens?**   
**GG: john**   
**GG: that is so not the weirdest thing**   
**EB: pssshhhhhhh**   
**GG: my brother, that is the weirdest thing! :(**   
**GG: how are we even related**   
**EB: whateverrrrrr**   
**EB: ...hey jade?**   
**GG: what? :D**   
**EB: how long do letters take to get to earth?**   
**EB: they told us but i can’t remember**   
**GG: uuuuhm like a month john**   
**GG: we talked about this like 100 times : T**   
**GG: Troll space is really far from home! the trip here took like**   
**GG: three months**   
**GG: we were just in stasis**   
**EB: oh yeah**   
**EB: I emailed dad is all**   
**GG: :C**   
**GG: sorry john**   
**GG: he won’t get it for a while :C**   
**EB: yeah**   
**EB: oh well!**   
**EB: i’m going to walk around, maybe then i’ll wanna sleep in the alien slime pods**   
**EB: (that are so cool)**   
**GG: ewwwww i am just sleeping on the floor :p**   
**GG: (they so are)**   
**EB: goodnight jade! hehehe lil sis**   
**GG: : T : T**   
**GG: gnite john :)**

**\--ectoBiologist [EB] ceased trolling gardenGnostic [GG]--**

++++

At this hour the lounge was deserted, the entire station flooded with a light so bright it made Karkat’s eyes hurt and a headache well up hot behind them. The insistent throb of it begged him to sleep, but he couldn’t, because he had homework to do and he’d be damned if he failed another class. Instead, he curled up on one of the couches and resisted the urge to throw his stupid data input module across the room. The screen was already cracked, evidence of times before when he’d failed to resist the urge. Past Karkat was a fucking tool who was too stupid to not break his own gogdamn school equipment, and he’d be fucked if he’d ask for another. Nepeta was stupid-flushed for him, probably, maybe if he asked her she’d ask her hulking asshole whatever the fuck he was to her to repair the fucking thing.

None of this train of thought was getting his homework done. Sharp teeth grit together so hard it hurt, and a hiss of frustration escaped him.

“Can’t you sleep either?”

The decidedly fucking _friendly_ voice from behind him made Karkat nearly jump out of his skin (it was a good thing there was nobody else around to see that fucking display of retardation, jegus) before he turned around. Oh for ff-- that nooksucking alien was here again. Karkat eyed him suspiciously.

“What the fuck are you doing here? There’s a curfew for you squishy assholes, you know.” Seemingly undaunted by Karkat’s perfectly justified hostility, the human John sat himself down on the opposite end of the lounge sofa.

“Couldn’t sleep.” So gogdamn cheerful. It was disgusting-- Karkat felt a little sick, really. Fucking weirdo. Karkat wondered if all humans were this inanely unbalanced, or if it was just a special talent this one had. He was beginning to suspect the latter, although the human race was still a thing he was adjusting to.

“What are you up to, anyway?” John inched closer; Karkat leaned away. “You’re using the wrong formula, you know.” His whole spine stiffened. What the fuck was this? Seriously? The pink monkey was leaning over his homework and-- and-- correcting it? A low warning growl came out of the back of his throat.

“Back off, asswipe.” He clutched his homework protectively in claw-tipped hands, hunching his body over it. Egbert made some sort of no doubt intended to be conciliatory motion with his arms, leaning back and laughing. Karkat hated the sound of his laughter. If it were possible, he would edit the sound out from the universe’s catalogue of possible noises so that nobody would ever have to hear it ever again. Least of all him.

“Hey, whoa! Chill out! I’ll just sit over here, okay? You do your homework or whatever, I’m sorry, Karkat.” He clenched his jaw again-- the human said his name wrong, even. How dense did you have to be to say a name as simple and common as his wrong? Especially considering he’d had it said for him! Whatever. Stupid asshole couldn’t get his name right, thereby making him more of a stupid asshole. What else was new. “I’ll just-- oh man do you think I could watch a movie? How does this even work?”

Karkat looked up again to gape. What-- He didn’t even-- _How did it work?_ What sort of backwards, horrible dirtball did he even come from if the little freak couldn’t even play a movie, that’s what Karkat wanted to know. A sad little universe, bereft of true culture and divinity if this was what they deemed the best ambassador to fucking interspecies understanding. Couldn’t even...!

“Oh shove over.” Irritable, irate. Karkat was a ball of righteous annoyance and John Egbert was the source. New depths of loathing were discovered and surpassed every time they met, it seemed. At any other time Karkat would probably have thought this was a good thing, hate being the stronger of the two emotions, but he didn’t even know if these stupid shitstain assholes even had proper romantic entanglements _not that it mattered anyway_. Karkat put an abrupt end to this train of thought and focused instead on the device in front of him.

“Thanks man! Hey, how come none of these have titles on them?” John leaned in close, way too close for any sort of comfort. There was bubble invasion going on here and Karkat didn’t like it, hunching his shoulders and trying not to look over his shoulder. Egbert’s ugly squishy face would just piss him off more, anyway.

“The fuck would a title even fit on the box, fuckass?” He said this half to himself, not really expecting John to know. Did they even have cinema in his shitty universe? It was probably horrible if they did. He’d been told they had less than 200 of their solar sweeps of cinematic history-- such a pathetically short-lived race. No wonder the stars were so far beyond them.

John didn’t say anything in response, really, just sort of hummed happily to himself and watched Karkat’s hands at the film player. He wasn’t used to such close scrutiny. Most people knew better, him being so lethal and all. This fucking nitwit though, even making allowances for the obvious inferiority of his species Karkat was having difficulty mentally processing these levels of... of... Karkat was out of adjectives to describe him. He was beginning to think he was just singularly _Egbertian_.

There was an exaggerated grunt of frustration when Karkat turned the film on. John didn’t move from his place on the floor, his expression trapped in something akin to rapture. Karkat hadn’t even paid attention to what film he’d put on. From the sound of it (of course Karkat wasn’t fucking watching, he had math to do) it was some shitty action film Vriska probably liked. Ugh. If there was a way to make the noise stop, he would use it.

Oh wait.

“Do you seriously have to watch that grubshit.” It was delivered flat, a statement of disgust. John looked away from the screen, face slackjawed in idiot surprise.

“Well, no, man. I guess not.” Karkat could hear some underlying tone of-- something-- in John’s voice, something hard to unravel under shitty species cultural divides. He didn’t give a fuck. He shifted uncomfortably and looked away. The fuck was he even making that face for? The film was objectively shitty, there was just basically no way around it.

“Whatever.” He shuffled again, bringing his knees up and his bare feet under his thighs. He caught Egbert trying not to stare out of the corner of his eye, blood rushing to his face. Karkat felt suddenly embarrassed, which was fucking ridiculous because if anyone was a freak here on this station it was the squishy pink monkeys. Still, he couldn’t help but feel fucking _different_ , oogled, a curiosity. The feeling wasn’t, precisely, a new one. He snapped his teeth together, plates on the back of his neck going rigid and a warning growl rumbling through his throat.

It pleased him when John unconsciously (it seemed) back away from him, a tense line in his body language that Karkat found thrilling. Those freakish blue eyes were riveted on his teeth, and why the fuck not? Karkat was a lethal motherfucker, lest any nooksucking assholes forget. He bared them a little wider, rewarded by a hard swallow from John.

Maybe Karkat liked humans, after all.

+++

Not all the students slept in the day cycle of the academy. Some, like Kanaya, were born mutated, with eyes that had difficulty seeing in the dark and were insensitive to light. Others merely kept opposite shifts, blinking groggily against the glare. Though the reigning Empress was a revolutionary one, ending the centuries-long taboo that kept adult trolls from living on the homeworld, young trolls were still expected to maintain their high level of independence. The tutoring drones were the only even partially sentient existences on the entire station, and it was up to the students to keep all systems running. Even when it was inconvenient to do so. Many looked on it as a kind of training, a chance to practice the skills that would serve them in their adult careers aboard starships. It was still expected that they would not linger around Alternia, no matter what sweeping social changes Her Imperial Monstrousness had seen fit to impliment. She was young yet in her reign, still relying on her terrible lusus to protect her-- and the spoils of war to feed her.

Sollux grimaced at his console. One of the lights above him flickered ever so slightly-- just enough to make his eyes hurt as he scanned endless streams of data. Being chosen for a watch shift was a great honor, and while Sollux could appreciate this he mostly thought it was a waste of his stupid time. His glasses got pushed up the bridge of his nose. A stupid waste of his stupid time that left him too much freedom to think about things he’d rather not.

 _Empress..._ And she was that, yeah, he got that. It was just hard to think of her that way, okay? Even if she was being hailed by some as some kind of... what did humans call them? Saints? A saving beam of light from the depths of Alternia’s oceans, to save them all. Alternately, soft in the head and first in line to be culled without that lusus of hers. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her, as a politician or on a more... personal level. It was a waste of his time, with blood like his, to think about her at all. Ugh.

Something caught his eye. He frowned, squinting at the screen. There was a blip. Momentary, possibly nothing, but there. Almost, one would think, a simple mechanical failure. Except his computers didn’t _have_ mechanical failures-- he made sure of it.

Something was most decidedly not right.


End file.
